As portable electronic devices offer an ever-increasing amount of functionality, people are using these devices to assist with a greater variety of tasks. As an example, a person in a store might want to obtain information about an item, such as reviews for a book or a price from a retailer of that item. Some applications enable a user to capture an image of a barcode on an item, and upload that image to a central server where the image can be analyzed and decoded. Such an approach can require a significant amount of time and bandwidth to upload, and requires an acceptable cellular signal in many instances, which can be difficult to obtain in large brick and mortar stores or other such locations. While the functionality could be loaded onto the device, the varying amount of focus and resolution can make it difficult to decode these images using conventional algorithms, thus requiring a significant amount of processing capacity and power consumption, which might be unavailable or at least undesirable for a user of a small portable device.